Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

Amy smiled politely. “But what if the wife isn’t dumb. What if she sees I’m way too smart to get mixed up with some lame-duck, middle-aged, half-married guy?”

“Ha,” said Broker, grinning.

“Ha, yourself. If we take the Ford down, how do we get back?” she asked.

“I have a buddy who runs a farm near Sommer’s place. He’s got my truck. I’ve been meaning to bring it back up north.”

“How long will we be gone?”

Broker shrugged, “A couple days?”

Amy thought about it and said, “I get one day at the Mall of America; it’ll save me a trip and I can get some shopping out of the way.”

“Deal.”

“Okay, I’ll go to keep you honest,” Amy said.

“Great. Let me throw some things in a bag, then we’ll go to your place and drop off your wheels,” Broker said.

Amy’s barely winterized rented cabin overlooked Lake Shagawa on the outskirts of Ely. As Broker came through the door he saw a computer, lots of books, cross-country skis, snow shoes, a pile of busted-out running shoes. He also smelled something. Propane gas.

It never failed to amaze him how natives could ignore every rule of winter survival, from going out in sub-zero temperatures in tennis shoes to living with leaky gas connections on their stoves.

Immediately Broker went to the sink, mixed some dish-washing detergent with water in a glass, crossed to the stove, and dabbed the suds on the connector stem, and saw bubbles blister up in the suds. “Do you have any wrenches?” he asked

“What?”

“You’re streaming gas. You’re going to blow up.”

And Amy, who had mastered the life-and-death complexities of an anesthesia machine, said, “Oh, the stove always smells a little.” She pointed. “Wrenches are in the drawer to the right of the sink. There should be some Recto Seal there, too.”

While Amy threw clothes into a duffel, Broker turned off the gas, unthreaded the valve, regooped the fitting, retightened it, tested it, and went to the bathroom to wash up. She’d hung a grotesque poster on the back of her bathroom door that showed the gross folds of a ridiculously obese human face. Mouth open, tongue out, its sex was impossible to determine. A hand-lettered caption over the picture announced: INTUBATE THIS!

As he dried his hand she moved in next to him, opened the cabinet, and removed several slim jars of various face oils and emollients. Then she picked up a palm-sized plastic wafer-her diaphragm-passed it under his nose, weighed it briefly in her hand, and dropped it in a cosmetic bag.

Broker frowned mildly at her clowning.

“I could always get hit by lightning,” she said airily, spinning on her heel.

He bet she was a demon for detail in the OR, but she was lax in her bathroom. He snagged her elbow, pulled her back, selected the tube of Gynol vaginal lubricant from a shelf, and tossed it to her. “Just in case it’s not greased lightning.”

Amy pursed her lips. “And I had you figured for a prude.”

Broker shrugged. “Hey, I was young once. You know how it goes: you drink too much, you wake up in a strange apartment with a lizard nesting in your mouth and her big scaly sister snoring in bed next to you, so you stagger for the bathroom, grab for a toothbrush. .” He made a face. “I’ve brushed my teeth with that stuff at least once in my life.”

For the first time since they’d met, they laughed.

Broker relaxed behind the steering wheel of Sommer’s big Ford and debated whether to empty the ashtray. He decided to leave it. The crushed cigarette butts were like Hank’s cold fingerprints. They were just a few miles down the road when Amy asked.

“So, did you go on hunches like this when you were a cop?”

“I was a lousy cop,” Broker said.

“Really?” Amy raised her arms, reached behind her head, and pulled her hair back in a practical ponytail.

“I mean I was good at what I did but I was a lousy cop,” Broker said. “Take Dave Iker, now he’s a good cop: responsible, a demon on details, street smart-but.” Broker poked a finger in the air. “Ninety-nine percent of the time he’ll get there after it happens. Then he’ll follow procedure. If he’s lucky, he’ll squeeze a snitch or a suspect to squeal on somebody. It’s worked that way since Cain killed Abel.”

“Dave says you were an adrenaline addict, that you never could go the speed limit.”

“There you go, procedure. Most cops are rigid about authority, they like to enforce rules.”

“And you?” Amy asked.

“I preferred to get there before it happens. That’s what deep undercover is all about. If you’re really going to catch monsters you go hang where the monsters live.”

“And maybe become a bit of a monster yourself?” Amy asked.

Broker held her gaze for a beat, then held up his hand with his thumb and forefinger a measured inch apart. “Maybe just a little.”

“Right, like a little pregnant,” Amy said.

After that, they exchanged normal information about attending the University of Minnesota in different eras. Amy mentioned the doctor she almost married in Minneapolis. Broker skirted the subject of his first wife.

He drove Highway 169 out of Ely and crossed the Laurentian Divide just north of Virginia, Minnesota. He got on 53 and took that into Cloquet where he stopped and filled up the Expedition at the landmark Frank Lloyd Wright gas station with its hovering witch’s-hat roof.

They bypassed Duluth and stopped at the Black Bear Casino for lunch. Then back on the road, Interstate 35 fast-forwarded them toward the Cities at seventy-five-plus mph. The traffic thickened and the evergreens gave way to mixed hardwood and fields around Hinckley. The Expedition purred powerfully on eight cylinders, and soon they were running a gauntlet of billboards and tract houses.

Then they skimmed the northern edge of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro and angled off east and took 95 south along the St. Croix River through Stillwater.

Then they entered the Timberry mall-sprawl and cul-de-sacs with names like Hunter’s Lane and Oak Ponds. Broker turned again, into the countryside west of the river.

“Where are we?” Amy asked.

“Lake Elmo,” Broker said. “I’m going to drop you with J.T. and then I’ll take the vehicle over to Sommer’s. I assume somebody will give me a ride back.”

“So who’s this friend?”

“J.T. Merryweather. Ex-St. Paul cop. Used to be my partner a million years ago. Now he’s into raising poultry.”

Twenty minutes later they arrived. Amy laughed out loud. “Since when are ostriches poultry?”

“J.T. says they’re the beef of the future.”

The objects of her surprise drifted big-eyed, short-beaked, long-necked, and very long-legged behind six-foot fencing. Flocks of gray-brown females and a few taller black-plumed males. They stood between seven and nine feet tall, and some of the males could weigh four hundred pounds. There were almost a hundred of them in the fenced paddocks, anomalous against the flaming maples and red oaks of the Minnesota countryside.

They turned into a drive past a country mailbox positioned on a setback so a snowplow wouldn’t knock it down. They passed a sign that spelled out royal kraal ostrich, j.t. merryweather, proprietor.

The snug two-story farmhouse was separated from a red barn by weeping willows. The door opened and a tall denim-clad man wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson walked out to greet them.

“He’s a black guy?” Amy said.

“Makes sense, huh? Both J.T. and his birds originated in Africa.”

Amy looked at the paradoxically ungainly but graceful birds floating across the cold afternoon shadows. “Those birds are a long way from Africa.”

Broker threw open the door, got out, and walked to meet J.T. They clasped hands, locked thumbs, and dapped it down, old style.